No; not mad at you. I just wanted to point out your generalization, and to point out that it seemed to be an issue of rudeness, not of gayness.
Hey Matt, thanks for taking my call…
I’m not saying that the gay community should stop accepting the different groups that make it up. I’m just wondering about the effect of such things on mainstream acceptance.
Since I posted the original question I’ve been thinking, “How would I, as a marketer, approach the problem of selling the gay community to mainstream america?”
I see two steps here:
Short Term: Tolerance
Long Term: Acceptance
So in order to establish the short term goal I’d attempt to minimize the Q-Rating (that is, the visibility) of those parts of the community that generate the highest negative feelings in the broader society while maximizing those parts that establish a comfort level for the target audience.
Bear in mind that I think this IS happening. The growth of gay characters in popular media is a good thing. While I still think it’s more acceptable to portray two women kissing than two men, it’s a start. I don’t watch a lot (or, really, any) television but how are gay couples portrayed there? Are they shown as committed couples going about their lives? That would be a great tolerance builder, IMHO.
After the short term goal of tolerance is established we move to acceptance. Acceptance being defined as the gay community being treated as just one more subculture of american life. Being gay becomes no more remarkable than being a shriner (and you’re not even required to wear the fez)(not that you couldn’t, of course, fezzes are cool)
I’m not saying that the long term goal is near, or even in sight, but I think the short term goal is closer now than it’s ever been. It’s a matter of pitching it for maximum effect.
But all this is just theory, I suppose. 
And that’s the exact problem.
The Queer movement can be one of two things: a political movement or a corporatist interest group. The first one centres around the ethical proposal that one be free to practice whatever sexual life one pleases without injuring others. The practical effects of this can be brought about by education, community work, political activism, and the like.
The second says, We are queer and we have to look out for ourselves and ourselves only. And then we are interested only in the group, and we are free - nay, obligated - to step on whoever gets in our way, including members of our own community, in order to advance the interests of the group.
For example, you say:
How shall we do that? Force them to lock themselves away? Deny their right to march in the pride parade? Make them feel sufficiently ashamed of themselves to avoid coming out into the light of day?
Any proposal we could make as to how to make a homophobic society feel comfortable is going to involve homophobia.
The drag queens are not in the gay pride parade either in order to épater les bourgeois or to promote tolerance and acceptance. They are there because they are within their rights so to be, and they are taking pride in exercising those rights.
If we deny the rights we are seeking - the right to be ourselves and exercise citizens’ rights regardless of our sexuality - to others, we become no better than those who are denying them to us.
Who will love me?
As a kinky heterosexual, I have to say that I appreciate the more outre elements of gay pride parades for raising the visibility of non-traditional sexual interests in general. If you have gay perverts publically flogging each other in a parade, it ultimatly makes it easier for me to find a straight pervert interested in a little private flogging back home.
Matt, I say this with the deepest respect, but I think that your own personality of “go-getter” is geting in the way here. I don’t think that Jonathan Chance is proposing any sort of action here–I think he is talking about the abstract. It is possible to think that it would be optimal if things were different and to recognize at the same time that there is no way of making things different that does not involve greater injustice. So to rephrase Jonathan’s question: “Do you think it would it be a good thing for the Gay Rights movement overall if the more radical particpents in Gay Pride Parades decided, totally on thier own, to stay home instead?” I recognize that for someone of your practical nature this sort of inquiry probably seems futile and a waste of time, but I think that is what Jonathan Chance is getting at (Jonathan Chance, feel free to correct me, of course)
I mean this too with full respect to you and Jonathan, but of what value is discussing strategy for a political movement in the abstract?
I mean, I really don’t understand how someone could believe both “it would be optimal if things were different” and “there is no way of making things different that does not involve greater injustice.”
If it involves greater injustice, it’s hardly optimal, is it?
Well, for one thing, because observing human nature is interesting in and of itself: it is by abstracting different political movements throughout history that one can extract general priniples: for example: “Groups seeking to change public perception inevitably have to distance themselves from thier own fringe elements to gain acceptance.” or “Movements which distance themselves from their own fringe elements inevitably lose thier motivation and fall apart.” These are interesting general observations about human nature. Which is true? I have no idea. Possibly both, depending on the circumstances. But musing on human nature is a worthwhile endevor in and of itself, and needs no immediate utility to justify itself.
I am thinking of a means/ends situation. You can have a situation where there are desirable ends but where the only means are unacceptable. By exploring and acknowledging that fact, you are open to the possibility that 1, 10, 50, 1000 years from now the situation will change so as those ends can be achieved without the unacceptable means. Thinking in the hypothetical allows us to keep our eye on the prize, so to speak.
Dear Gay Guy,
I hope this hasn’t already been asked repeatedly… What do you think of people saying that they knew they were gay as small children? I’ve heard people say they knew as young as 3 or 4. I find that strange, because until the end of the latency period, most kids don’t seem to like the oposite sex(boys have cooties, you know), and I’d think it’d be similar with same sex preferences.
Let me creep in here with my take on this…
I can remember watching an almost-naked Ron Ely as Tarzan on Saturday mornings and having the most incredible and wonderful glowing tingly feeling down around the bottom of my tummy. I couldn’t have been older than about five. And of course I didn’t consciously know what was going on. But it was a definite hindsight sign of my orientation…
jayjay
I don’t know if you’ve been asked this before (that’s a lot of posts to go through!) but here goes:
Do you find female sexlives or their reproductive system “gross” in the same way that most straight men seem to find gay sex gross? I subsribe to the theory that it is mostly a psychological problem men have with homosexuality that causes the gross-out, so it would be interesting to know how gay men feel about straight sex.
— G. Raven
Again, I’m a gay guy, but not the gay guy (waves to Esprix), but I’ll give my opinion.
Imagining me, myself, personally having sex with a woman makes me…kind of mildly ill. But not in the same extreme as some of the straight men I know appear to feel ill when they imagine themselves having gay sex.
And as far as impersonal straight sex or lesbian sex…nope. Don’t feel ill at all. I used to rent straight porn when I was still too closeted to trust the scummy video rental clerk to keep his mouth shut about what tapes I was getting. Lesbian sex…bored. Not interested. But not disgusted.
Now, I reserve the right to be disgusted by certain variants of those acts…thinking of red wings or felching makes me physically cringe. But the vanilla acts themselves…nah.
I sometimes wonder if the straight male reaction to any gay sex is more a show (look! I’m straight! I’m not gay at all! Look!) than a real thing. Because if you think about it, straight guys have no problems at all in gym locker rooms. None. No cringing from the nasty male nakedness, no violent heaves, nothing. But if they know that one of those naked males is gay, even if he’s not doing anything at all different from all the straight guys, they have intense attacks of squeam. Why is this?
Um, disclaimer…I did not mean to implicate all straight guys in the above. I’ve known many tolerant and understanding straight guys who just don’t care. I am hereby declaring the above paragraph non-monolithic.
jayjay (covering his ass since 2001)
Cool, thanks JayJay, that’s kind of what I had figured my self.
Interesting point about locker rooms too, a gay presence shouldn’t transform the circumstances, which goes to show what a psychological hangup this whole thing is.
BTW, I’m a psychology major, so that’s kind of the angle I was looking for anyway 
— G. Raven
Matt-
I appreciate the show of respect. I hope you can understand that venturing into this subject in the way I did makes me nervous.
Mando Jo had it right. I think it’s possible that the more public displays of the extreme elements of the gay community work against the publics ability to feel greater acceptance of homosexuals overall. But I never said they should be suppressed. Unless I’m reading things wrongly, there’s great joy and amusement in these displays during pride marches. And that tells me that these people are valued more than the marginal increase in acceptance is. And that’s fine. But I do think there’s a trade off occuring.
To Matt’s more recent question, I think it would be nice to live in an optimal world but, in truth, we live in a practical world. I think we all know that we’ll never be entirely rid of homophobia or racism, though it’s nice to think we’re working towards minimizing them. But are we? If minimizing injustice means suppression of anothers beliefs (the homophobic) isn’t that a trade off as well? I’m by no means defending homophobia but (at least under US law, I don’t know about Canadian law) I certainly believe they have the right to believe and express their view, regardless of how pathetic I think it is. If, in an optimal world, we could eliminate (by fiat) homophobia would that greater justice offset the injustice of denying someone’s freedom of speech?
But, heck. I was the 10-year old jew who argued in middle school that the dumb-ass neo-Nazi’s had a right to march in Skokie (I was in Wilmette at the time)(both suburbs of Chicago, for the Chicagoland impaired).
So my discussion is in the abstract. I don’t actually think you could get a ‘gay persons’ convention together and set a timetable for a PR campaign and persuade all the drag queens to tone down the act for ‘the greater good’. But, again, I think the trade off is there.
[[“Do you think it would it be a good thing for the Gay Rights movement overall if the more radical particpents in Gay Pride Parades decided, totally on thier own, to stay home instead?”]]
Jesus, we’re talking about a parade here. I surely hope that straight people aren’t stereotyped by the clowns and nerdy bands in “our” parades!
Jill
Well, I’m really depressed about gay men, and gay life in general. I went on yet another hopeless date, and, sure enough, the guy wants to get me in bed.
WTF is wrong with gay men? Why is it every man I meet is shallow, dysfunctional, and sex-obsessed? Would it kill a guy to have a pleasant conversation and just hang out? What with this and getting my wrist broken outside of JR’s, I’m giving up men, and settling for being alone.
I’ll just take a Wag on locker room behavior re: straight guys.
I’ve never seen it, but I’ll take it as a general fact that when a known gay guy walks into a locker room, all the straight guys act all funny, and cover up.
But, wouldn’t they act the same way if a woman walked in?
In either case, before the person in question showed up, there were just some guys that happened to be naked, going about their business.
Once the person walks in they’re suddenly on display, they feel, and uncomfortable about it.
I think it’s kind of silly, but I can understand it.
At a health club I used to belong to, there was this guy who would spend most of his time in the locker room, just hanging out, naked.
You’d walk in to get changed and he’d walk over to you and just start talking, baseball, the weather, etc, but it made me uncomfortable as hell.
It wasn’t the fact that he was naked, it just seemed that nakedness wasn’t a side-effect of being in the locker room for him, it seemed to be his reason for being there.
I don’t think he was cruising or anything, it was just really weird.
Well, think about it…these are men you’re talking about :). Anyway, this is why i really dont care to seek out anyone at the gay bar i go to with friends. I’m there to hang out with people I know and have a good time. If I meet some one, so be it, but i wont be doing the one night stand thing, and they’d better be prepared to get to know me first (which means i’ll be single for quite some time I think).
In fact, a lot of the guys there i wouldnt go home with anyway (and the ones i might are usually taken :)). It’s funny to sit at a table in the bar and watch people, and see what everyone does. It’s all a game…where everyone who is playing hopes to get laid.
So, I sit with one of my friends (who i kind of like, but right now it’s really more i just like hanging out with him), and we chat, and talk with other people we know.
If only 5% of the population were women, I’d be thinking about gettin’ down every time I met one too 
It’s probably the fact that a minority is gathering in large numbers that brings out the kid in a candy store feeling in guys (like Doob said, guys ARE guys after all), but that’s a wag.
— G. Raven